


Insomniacs Anonymous

by FloriaTosca



Series: Self-Indulgent Post AoU Gen 'verse [3]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Community: hc_bingo, Dreams and Nightmares, Fluff and Angst, Friendship, Gen, Injury Recovery, Insomnia, Light Angst, Movie Night, Pets, Pietro Maximoff Lives, Pop Culture, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Star Wars - Freeform, Team Bonding, side effects of enhanced metabolisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-27
Updated: 2015-09-27
Packaged: 2018-04-23 13:32:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,974
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4878739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FloriaTosca/pseuds/FloriaTosca
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Most of the new Avengers can't sleep.  Fortunately, their facility has a well-stocked media library.   Movie-watching and bonding ensue.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Insomniacs Anonymous

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the hurt/comfort bingo square "Nightmares."

    Bucky tried to be philosophical about it.  When your personal rock bottom was “brainwashed murder puppet who can’t remember his own name,” it shouldn’t be hard to see the comparatively bright side of objectively shitty situations.  Theoretically.  Theoretically, Bucky could appreciate that “shellshocked part-time nervous wreck who can make civilized conversation on a good day if you don’t make any sudden moves” was several steps up from the goddamn Asset, but in practice?  Bucky would really appreciate it if his goddamn brain would at least settle on a form of crazy that didn’t contradict itself.  Was wanting his brain to pick exhausted or jumpy too damn much to ask?

    Probably.  

    Bucky had been dragging all day - he’d only made it out of bed in the first place because his dog needed to be fed and walked - but now it was the middle of the night and his brain would not shut up and settle.  How the hell was that fair?  Bucky had tried breathing exercises, hot milk, chamomile tea, old SHIELD regulations manuals - everything short of literally counting sheep - but no dice.  Closest he’d got was a sort of fuzzy doze, but then he’d had one of those falling half-dreams and woken up edgier than before.  Dr. Cho had cooked up some sleeping pills that his metabolism didn’t burn through like tissue paper, but Bucky prefered to save those for really dire situations.  The pills worked a little too well, and Bucky hated feeling groggy.

    “Aw, to hell with it,” Bucky said.  The sound of his voice woke up Punk, who decided that people talking meant that Something Was Amiss.  The little dog trotted around Bucky’s bedroom sniffing inquisitively at the door and all the furniture before settling down next to Bucky’s bed and looking up at Bucky with an expectant expression.  Bucky rolled over and leaned down to pet him with his right arm.  “You should go back to bed, pup,” Bucky said.  “No point in both of us having a terrible night.”  Punk just whined and jumped up against the side of Bucky’s bed.

    “All right.  C’mere, you,” Bucky said.  He scooped the little dog up and cuddled him as Punk licked his face enthusiastically, and felt a little better,  but no closer to falling asleep.  “Whaddya say, Punk?  Should we go bother Steve?  Make it Captain America’s problem?”  Punk briefly perked up and wagged his tail at the sound of Steve’s name - probably because, out of all the Avengers, Steve had the most patience for throwing tiny frisbees - but despite this ringing endorsement, Bucky decided to let Steve sleep.  Bucky woke Steve up in the middle of the night often enough when he had nightmares about the helicarrier and needed to make sure Steve wasn’t dead.  

    Bucky gave up on sleep for the moment and just tried to make himself relax, but at this hour of the night all his favorite baby animal live streams were fast asleep, and listening to music required headphones.  As in, stuff around his head.  Not really an appealing option in his current state.  He tried reading, but stopped after he realized he’d read through the same paragraph three times and still had no idea what was going on.

    “This is ridiculous,” Bucky said.  “I’m gonna go out and make myself a cup of tea or something.  You can come along if you want to.”  Bucky pulled on his favorite sweater over his pajamas and set off for the communal kitchen, Punk trotting at his heels.

 

 

* * *

_Natasha was on a mission.  She was in Europe - probably an old city somewhere near the Baltic, with labyrinthine streets full of fancy brick buildings - but she couldn’t name the city or country.  She had to make the rendezvous; now where was the building?  “You can’t miss it,” her handler had told her.  Very helpful.  Oh, there it was.  Finally.  Natasha was wearing her uniform and her Widow’s Bites, and yet she managed to slip past the security without incident.  Now what?  Natasha knew that she had to kill one man, and seduce another, and both of them worked in this building.  But for the life of her, she couldn’t remember their names, their faces, or where their offices were located.  She ducked into an unoccupied washroom and tried to contact her handler, but he wasn’t answering._

Natasha woke up with a knot of apprehension and self-reproach in the pit of her stomach.  ‘ _Great job.  You managed to forget all the identifying information about both your targets.  That is a special kind of ineptitude_ ,’ she thought.  Then she got up, walked to her bathroom, and washed her face with cold water.  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Natasha said.  “You know you’re better than that.  You’ve had better tradecraft since you were ten.”  Natasha’s cat Liho watched judgmentally from her perch on the dresser and had nothing constructive to offer.

Natasha’s head felt clearer, but the knot of anxiety in her gut had not completely untangled, and she knew she wasn’t going to be getting any sleep for a while.  Natasha had never been a sound sleeper when something felt Wrong.  Handy for an operative in the field with a bunch of people trying to kill her, less so in a safe environment dealing with the aftermath of really stupid nightmares.

Natasha decided to go see if Vision was up.  The android had a combination of thoughtful earnestness and snark that made dissecting inane late-night TV with him particularly entertaining.  She put on a robe, grabbed her Ñandutí lace frame, and headed for the base’s media room.

 

* * *

Sam thought of himself as a guy with pretty solid emotional intelligence, but he had no idea why he was feeling like this.  It had been a good day for him: training in the morning - and with Pietro cleared for exercise now, Sam had the pleasure of seeing someone lap Captain Thoroughbred - lunch with his birder bros, afternoon working at the raptor sanctuary, and watching _The Princess Bride_ with the other Avengers in the evening because Vision, Bucky, and the twins had never seen it.  No stray HYDRA agents lurking in the bushes, no family problems to worry about, no major issues with the team.  Bucky had been quiet and subdued all day, but Sam had done a little discreet investigating at breakfast and determined that Bucky wasn’t dissociating or soul-crushingly miserable, just tired.  Which was pretty normal for a guy in Bucky’s situation.  It had been a good day.  So why was Sam having such a frustrating night?

Sam had fallen asleep with no more than his usual level of tossing and turning.  (Sam loved being a superhero, he really did, but one battle on the helicarriers overrode six months of therapy as far as his sympathetic nervous system was concerned.)   Then he’d gone through about one sleep cycle’s worth of innocuous dreams before the weird shit started.  

First dream was he and Riley as Jaeger pilots, with the other people in the Shatterdome consisting of Avengers, people Sam knew from the military, and Sam’s eccentric high school biology teacher.  That one had been kind of fun, although dreams where Riley was alive always felt bittersweet at best after Sam woke up.  Second dream was Sam and Rhodey flying a rescue mission in the desert - which was supposed to be Afghanistan but looked more like pictures Sam had seen of the surface of Mars, and why the hell was a pilot/engineer doing a PJ’s job, anyway?  But every time they got to where their guy was supposed to be it turned into a case of “your princess is in another castle.”  Sam had woken up from that one feeling irrationally annoyed with the imaginary person he was supposed to be rescuing.  ‘ _Man, we are trying to save your life here!  Don’t make this harder than it has to be_.’

Third dream was Insight Day, but Sam still had his wings and was there when the helicarriers went down.  The Winter Soldier was nowhere to be seen and it was up to Sam to fish Steve out of the Potomac.  He’d done water rescues before, and how hard could it be to find a six-feet-and-change blond guy in a flag suit?  Pretty hard, it turned out, when the water was that murky and the river was so much deeper and darker than he’d anticipated.  Sam spent what should have been way too long for one guy to hold his breath swimming through labyrinths of wreckage and silty black water while sharks and anglerfish lurked at the edges of his vision.  He finally caught sight of Steve’s limp body washed up against a fallen girder, but he woke up before he could tell if Steve was alive or dead.  After that, Sam did not see himself getting back to sleep anytime soon.  Moving around generally helped Sam clear his head - that was one of the reasons he’d taken up running - so Sam cued up his “Mellow Soul Jams” playlist on his phone and went out to stretch his legs.  He didn’t have a particular destination in mind, just somewhere he could walk and think without disturbing anyone who was trying to sleep.

 

* * *

Wanda and Pietro had given up on getting any more sleep.  Pietro hadn’t been able to get back to sleep after his midnight snack because he was still sore from overdoing it in training that morning.  Not that Wanda blamed him.  It was the first time her brother had been allowed to really properly run since he’d been shot, so of course he was going to take advantage of the opportunity.  Pietro’s sleep schedule had been weird anyway since the Experiment - he woke up every couple hours, he got horrible night terrors if he didn’t have a midnight snack, and even if he did, he was horribly grumpy and sluggish (for him) in the morning before he had breakfast.  Doctor Cho had explained that this was a side effect of his metabolic enhancements.  

Wanda still slept like she always had - maybe more nightmares, but she’d had plenty of those since her parents died - except for a new ability to eavesdrop involuntarily on the dreams of nearby sleepers.  Sometimes this was funny - like Colonel Rhodes’s dream about forgetting his uniform trousers when he had to give a speech to the Joint Chiefs of Staff.  Sometimes it was horrific, like most of Bucky’s nightmares.  And sometimes this just got awkward.  Wanda had not really needed to know that much about the Captain’s crush on Xena the Warrior Princess.

“You should go back to bed,” Pietro said.  “No point both of us losing sleep.  I’m just going to sit on the couch and play video games until the painkillers kick in.”

“Believe me, Pietro,” Wanda said, “This is no hardship.   I’d rather stay up with you than get front-row seats to everyone else’s nightmares.”  In the quiet of the communal kitchen, it was easy to hear the little click as the electric teakettle shut off.  “Want some tea?” Wanda asked.  Pietro nodded, and Wanda floated down two mugs from the top shelf of the cupboard - who had designed this kitchen anyway, Captain America? - filled them with hot water, and put in linden-blossom tea bags.

    Pietro looked weirdly contemplative, although that might have been because he was trying to hold himself in a way that didn’t make his injuries hurt more.  “I need a distraction,” he said.

    _'And probably a heat pack_ ,' Wanda thought.  “We could watch a movie,” she suggested.

    “I’ve been wanting to see _Star Wars_ ,” Pietro said.  “If Stark’s going to keep calling us Luke and Leia I need to know whether I should punch him or not.”  The last time Tony Stark had come to the facility to upgrade the War Machine suit, he’d thought it was hilarious to call the twins Jaime and Cersei.  Pietro and Wanda hadn’t understood the reference immediately - Hydra research facilities didn’t get HBO - but once they were filled in they had not been amused.

    “Sometimes I think Stark needs to be punched on general principle,” Wanda said, “But _Star Wars_ sounds like a good idea.”  The twins left the kitchen with their mugs of tea, a couple of hot gel packs from the kitchen’s overstocked first aid kit, and a bag of _chrumky_ , and headed for the media room.

    Vision was already seated on the couch watching some kind of documentary about deep-sea creatures, with the sound turned down and the closed captioning on.  Wanda wasn’t surprised to see him - she knew that his synthetic nervous system didn’t require as much rest as a bio-person’s - but she hadn’t known he was interested in marine biology.  

    “Are we interrupting something?” Wanda asked.

    “Not at all,” Vision said graciously.  “I would appreciate the company.”

    “Now that’s just wrong,” Pietro said, when the vampire squid came on-camera.

    “I think it’s weirdly beautiful,” said Vision.  “It all is.  Life always finds a way under the least encouraging conditions.”

    “Yeah, but you just know that some mad scientist is going to make a giant version and we’re gonna have to fight it.”  

    Wanda didn’t find the creature as disturbing as her brother did, but she had to admit, he did have a point there.  

    “Perhaps,” Vision said thoughtfully.  “But they’d be better off with Humboldt squid.”

    The credits rolled, and Pietro grabbed the remote and started clicking through the Avengers’ enormous digital media library.  “Why are there two versions of _Star Wars_?” he asked, pointing to the menu on the tv screen, which listed both _Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope (Special Edition)_ and _Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope (Good Version)._

    “Many people in the fandom were unhappy with some of the changes George Lucas made to the re-release,” Vision said.  “Including Tony Stark, it seems.”

    “Okay, but which one should we watch?” asked Pietro.

    “Since none of us have seen either of them,” said Vision, “I’m inclined to trust the taste of the person who has.  At least for now.”  Wanda didn’t like the idea of relying on Stark’s judgement, but it wasn’t as if her own track record of recent decisions was that great either, and Vision did have a point.

    Wanda noticed the cornier aspects of the movie more than a nostalgia-steeped American probably would have, but even so, there was something intensely appealing about it.  Pietro was less amused.

    “What?  No!” Pietro sputtered after the callow teenage farmboy hero did something callow and teenage-boyish.  “I am not Luke.  I’m much more awesome!”

    “I think he’s the protagonist,” Wanda told her brother.  “He needs to start off a hapless underdog so there will be room for character development.”

    “If you say so,” Pietro said dubiously.  

    Wanda did have to say that the business with the Imperial soldiers murdering Luke’s aunt and uncle was in bad taste.  Maybe it was traditional for heroes of this kind of story to be orphans with no family obligations to tie them down, but that was just… gratuitous.  

    By the time the heroes got to the disreputable space bar with all the funny-looking aliens, Pietro’s painkillers had kicked in.  He quit his kvetching and slumped onto Wanda’s shoulder while smiling drowsily at the action on-screen.

   

* * *

    When Bucky and Punk reached the kitchen, Bucky decided to go for hot chocolate instead of tea.  He hadn’t been hungry all day, but with Bucky’s metabolism, depression, lethargy, and loss of appetite could spin out into some kind of vicious circle too damn quickly.  If he didn’t consume something substantial, Bucky was going to hate himself tomorrow morning.  More than he usually did on this kind of bad day.  

When he was refilling the electric kettle, Bucky noticed that the remaining water in the bottom was still warm and faint noises were coming from the direction of the media room.  He was not surprised that someone else was up and rattling around.  It wasn’t like Bucky was the only person on the team who had bad dreams.  

Punk started prancing around in little circles and squeaking as Bucky rummaged through the cupboards and fridge and took out the cocoa mix, Nutella, heavy cream, and protein powder.  “Easy there, buddy,” Bucky said.  “This isn’t for you.  Chocolate’s not good for dogs.  I’ll get you something nice when I’m done with this, but you gotta be patient, okay?”  When Bucky had his hot chocolate prepared to his satisfaction and Punk had been bought off with a spoonful of peanut butter, they set off for the media room to see who else was up at this hour.

Vision and the twins were sitting on the couch watching a science fiction movie in which, as far as Bucky could tell, the good guys were trying to infiltrate some kind of enemy military installation, emphasis on trying.  It all went downhill pretty fast, but at least they managed to break out the princess.  Who, from the little Bucky had seen of her, seemed to be cut from the same cloth as Peggy Carter.  Bucky had no idea why everyone wanted to do what they were doing or what the story’s larger context was, but the characters were familiar enough types that it wasn’t hard to follow along.  For the most part.

“Wait,” Bucky said, during a lull in the action.  “How can a military official just up and imprison a member of the royal family?  Doesn’t she outrank him?  Even if she has been running around committing treason against the crown or something, wouldn’t the emperor and empress want some input on what happened to her?”

“Leia’s only a princess of one planet,” Wanda explained.  “Not the entire empire.  And the Imperials blew her planet up.”

“Damn,” Bucky said.  “Those guys don’t fuck around.”

“Indeed they don’t,” said Vision.

 

* * *

As Natasha had hoped, Vision was up, but he already had company.  He was sharing the couch with Wanda and a very sleepy Pietro, and Bucky was sitting on the floor nearby with his little fluffball dog dozing in his lap.  Bucky must have been having a bad night if he was avoiding chairs.  They were watching _Star Wars_ , and the rebels were just beginning the assault on the Death Star.  

The first time Natasha saw Star Wars, she’d watched it with Clint, about two weeks after she’d defected to SHIELD.  Her new allies had finally come to believe that she probably wasn’t there to kill them all, but she wasn’t allowed in any strategically important parts of the base yet and she couldn’t do anything useful because she was still recovering from an arrow wound in her calf.  So Clint, who was still in a spot of trouble with his superiors for “showing up on the doorstep with an internationally wanted assassin like she was some kind of goddamn stray kitten,” as Nick Fury had put it, had decided that this was the perfect time to show her the wonders of American pop culture.  Natasha had heard of _Star Wars_ , through cultural osmosis, but she’d never seen it.  The Red Room had distrusted anything that glorified rebellion, even in a fantastic context.

Natasha tiptoed in and perched on the arm of the couch next to Pietro.  The couch was a plush monster with arms that were more than broad enough for someone of Natasha’s size and agility to sit on in security and comfort.  With Pietro leaning in and dozing on his sister, they weren’t likely to get in each other’s way.

After Luke, Han, and Chewie had received their medals and the credits began to roll, Natasha took out her lace frame and needle and started filling in a red and black spider.  “What’s that?” Wanda asked.  “I like the colors.”

Why am I not surprised, Natasha thought.  “Ñandutí.  Paraguayan spiderweb lace.  I learned how to make it when Clint and I were holed up in a safehouse outside Asuncion.”

“So are the spiders traditional, or are they a Black Widow thing?” Bucky asked.

“Neither,” Natasha said curtly.  She paused, took a deep breath, and thought very carefully about what to say next.  “We didn’t do craft projects when I was growing up,” Natasha said.  “That’s not what Black Widows are for.  We’re infiltrators.  Killers.  We don’t make things.”

“But you do,” Vision pointed out.

“Well, nowadays I do all sorts of things that would horrify my trainers,” Natasha said, smiling.

“Amen to that,” said Bucky.  

 

* * *

After a few circuits through the hallways of the common rooms and the low-security labs and offices, Sam’s head felt clearer and he no longer saw Steve washed up against the fallen girder whenever he zoned out.  But the exercise had made him thirsty, and he still didn’t feel ready to go back to bed, so he went to the kitchen instead of going straight to his room.  When he was pouring himself some juice, he noticed the soft noises coming from the media room and got curious.

Bucky, Natasha, Vision, and the twins were in the middle of watching _The Empire Strikes Back_ \- okay, technically Pietro wasn’t watching it, since he was lying on the couch wrapped in one of Sam’s Nana’s afghans, dead to the world.  Pietro’s head was resting in his sister’s lap while Wanda played with his hair.  She’d clearly been at it for a while, since Sam could see a couple rows of white-boy cornrows before a merciful transition to an attempt at finger waves.

Considering how Wanda and Bucky reacted to Yoda, Sam would bet that neither of them had seen the movie before.  Wanda probably wasn’t totally unspoiled - she was from Sokovia, not Mars - but Bucky?  It was worth sticking around just to see how he was going to react to the Big Reveal.  

That train of thought led Sam to wonder if _The Empire Strikes Back_ was really the best choice of viewing material if Bucky was having a bad night.  Bucky was not easily triggered by fiction - he skipped the Borg episodes of _Star Trek_ , but he liked _Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt_ and that Jet Li movie about the guy who was raised as a human attack dog - but between the torture, carbonite freezing, and limb loss, the later parts of ESB had a lot of stuff that could stir up Bucky’s issues.  But Bucky hated anything that smacked of being treated like he didn’t know his own mind - as far as Sam could tell, he hated it worse than strangers getting all up in his personal space and asking him about the state of his immortal soul, but less than medical procedures.  So Sam kept his mouth shut, grabbed a couple of cushions, and sat down near Bucky - within his “people I know and like who aren’t Steve” bubble, not right next to him - prepared to offer moral support if necessary, and if not, to enjoy the show.

Sam was not disappointed.  Wanda’s reaction to Vader’s reveal was appreciative, though subtle, but Bucky’s was gold.  He would have been on the edge of his seat during Luke and Vader’s duel if he hadn’t been sitting on the floor.  When Vader told Luke about his ancestry, Bucky froze in place and stared at the screen with huge wide eyes.  Bucky was holding so still that Sam got a little worried about dissociation, but after an uncomfortably long pause Bucky relaxed into a more natural posture, shook his head, and muttered “Ben Kenobi, you lying sonofabitch.”

When the credits rolled and nobody made any moves to get up and go back to bed, Sam realized that it was time for an executive decision.  “Any of you guys have strong opinions about the prequels?” Sam asked.  “One way or another?”

“I haven’t seen them,” said Vision.  Wanda and Bucky shrugged.

“I watched the second and third ones with Clint,” Natasha said.  “They’re not bad.”

“How long does everyone want to stay up?” Sam asked.  “We can do this all night if we watch the prequels.”

“Might as well,” said Bucky.  “I can’t sleep anyway.”

“And I have no need to,” Vision added.

“Pietro is probably going to wake up in a couple of hours when his medication wears off,” Wanda added.  

“And I’ve already seen it,” said Natasha.  “So it’s not like I’ll never know if Han ever gets out of the carbonite if I go back to bed.”

“Okay, Wanda, you’ve got the remote?”  Wanda nodded.  “Bring up _Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones_.”

“Why aren’t we watching _Episode I_?” Wanda asked.

Sam winced a little, internally.  He really had no desire to get into the complexities of Star Wars fandom wank and Jar-Jar Binks right then.  “It’s complicated,” Sam said.  He remembered Riley ranting about midichlorians and smiled wistfully.  “But everything in there that’s important later gets reintroduced in _Attack of the Clones_.  Why spend an extra two hours watching irrelevant backstory?”

“Fair enough,” Wanda said.

Bucky turned around and looked up at Wanda through his eyelashes.  “Wanda, be a doll and pass me some of those crunchy things.”

Wanda stared back at Bucky, unimpressed, and flung a handful of _chrumky_ at him with her powers.  Bucky caught them easily and responded with a tired and careworn attempt at his best roguish grin.  Bucky reminded Sam of something he hadn’t considered when he suggested that they watch the prequels: the sheer potential triggeriness of Anakin’s arc.  Maybe it’d be fine - Bucky had made it through the end of _The Empire Strikes Back_ okay.  But Bucky had these things about manipulative older men and people hurting their loved ones while in a compromised mental state.  Plus there was Vader’s cyborgification scene at the end of _Revenge of the Sith_.  Sam thought that, under the circumstances, he had an obligation to let Bucky know what he was in for.

“It’s kind of funny,” Sam said.  “ _Phantom Menace_ has this reputation for being kiddie but the other two prequels are pretty damn dark.  Well, dark for Star Wars.”

“How does that work?” Bucky asked.

“It’s Darth Vader’s origin story, so you know that’s gonna end in tears.  Guy winds up losing his loved ones, his moral compass, and a few major body parts.  We find out how he ended up in the suit, which was pretty traumatic.  And the main villain’s not just some evil overlord, he’s more like Space Hitler with better interpersonal skills and enough free time to spend messing with individual people along with his whole plan to take over the galaxy.  Same guy, but I’d say this version’s more disturbing because it’s more personal and realistic.”

Sam felt something poke him in the ear, and looked up to see that Natasha had moved and her feet were now dangling off the couch near Sam’s head.  “Thanks for spoiling the movies, jerk,” Natasha said, grinning down at him unrepentantly.

“Ain’t my fault they never explained prequels in spy school,” Sam said.  Natasha poked him with her toe again, which Sam thought was completely unwarranted.  “Hey, Bucky,” Sam said, “Wanna find out if ninjas are ticklish?”

Before Bucky could answer, Natasha jackknifed and launched herself to the back of the couch, where she sat huddled with her feet tucked under her, ready to defend herself with some kind of needlework project.  The only time Sam had seen anything else that didn’t have wings go airborne that fast was when he’d been drafted into helping his sister bathe her cat.  “I’m gonna take that as a yes,” Sam said.

Wanda looked at her human teammates like she couldn’t believe the Earth was protected by this bunch of goofballs and silently turned on _Attack of the Clones_.

 

* * *

Steve was not surprised that he wasn’t the only one up early that morning - Sam usually joined him on his morning run; Bucky, too, if he felt up to it - but he didn’t expect to be sharing the kitchen with Bucky’s little dog and Pietro.  Where was Wanda, what was Bucky’s dog doing there with no Bucky, and what the hell had happened to Pietro’s hair?  Pietro was still standing in front of the fridge drinking electrolyte juice straight out of the bottle, and Steve knew that he wasn’t going to be getting any sense out of him until the sugar kicked in.  Steve turned to Punk, who was wagging his tail madly and bouncing around the kitchen in excited little circles.  “Glad to see you too, buddy,” Steve said.  “Do you have any idea where everyone is?”  Punk skidded to a halt in front of Steve and began sniffing inquisitively at Steve’s socks, but had nothing useful to contribute.  Steve hadn’t really expected better - Punk had many sterling qualities, but the little guy was no Rin Tin Tin.

Pietro was still standing by the fridge occupied with his juice, but he paused between swallows to gesture toward the door to the media room.  Steve thanked him and set off with Punk to investigate.

The media room’s lights were dimmed and the giant television was playing a Star Wars movie.  Vision was watching intently, but the room’s human occupants were out like lights.  Wanda was slumped against Vision, Natasha was stretched over the back of the couch like a cat, and Bucky and Sam had made a little nest of afghans and throw pillows on the floor.  Steve tiptoed back to the kitchen as quietly as a guy his size could, put on a pot of coffee, and grabbed his phone from where it was charging on the counter.  Wasn’t taking embarrassing candid photos of your friends supposed to be all the rage nowadays?  And even if it wasn’t, Steve would still want photographic evidence that Natasha had the same sleeping habits as her cat and that even after seventy years and having to rebuild his sense of self from the ground up, Bucky was still a goddamn blanket hog.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Linden tea is an herbal tea popular in Europe, and supposed to be good for anxiety and sleep disorders. Chrumky, or peanut puffs, are a popular Slovak snack. I haven't tried them myself but they seem to be rather like peanut-flavored cheetos, but a bit more healthful.  
> Ñandutí is a traditional form of Paraguayan embroidered lace, and the name really does mean "spiderweb" in Guarani. It can be very colorful, but I've never seen a design featuring red and black spiders.  
> Humboldt squid are active predators that are as smart as dogs, can swim 15 mph and weigh up to 100 pounds, and have been reported to attack human divers or fishermen. Vampire squid are the size of footballs and mostly scavengers.


End file.
